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Chapter41
HARPER: AN HOUR LATER
The car came to a stop, and Aria pressed her nose to the window. “Is that your old school, Aunt Harper?”
“It is. It’s good ole Baxter Park Elementary. It’s where I met Penny, Libby, and Charlotte.”
“I see my friends. Oscar, Phoebe, and Sebastian are on the swings,” the girl exclaimed. “Aunt Harper, will you hold my piano eraser and be super-duper extra careful with it?”
“Hand it over. You know it’s safe with me,” she replied and presented her palm.
Aria placed the tiny piano in the center and gave the little rubber item one last look. “Can I go play?”
“Go for it,” Landon answered.
The kid whipped off her seat belt, bolted from the vehicle, and booked it toward the swing set.
The swing set.
Who would have thought creaky metal, rusty chains, and a few strips of rubber could hold such meaning?
She looked on as Aria ran past a cluster of benches and waved to their friends, who’d settled themselves under the shade of a towering oak. A reddish-brown leaf fluttered to the ground. She watched it dance in the air until it landed on the empty bench next to Penny and Rowen.
“Pretty soon, the trees will be bare,” she said, and felt Landon’s hand on her knee.
“Fall has always been my favorite season, especially in Colorado,” he replied with a sweet, wistful quality to his voice. “If the seasons were a song, fall would make the perfect ending.”
“What would spring be?” she asked as another leaf drifted to the ground.
“Spring would be the intro, alive with possibilities. Summer would be jam-packed with the verses, chorus, and the bridge, and then comes fall. When the leaves turn from green to an array of reds, browns, yellows, and burnt orange, fall reminds you of how far you’ve come.”
She studied her friends.
They’d come so far since Madelyn Malone entered their lives.
“You forgot one. What about winter?”
“It’s when life slows down and gives you time to dream of new melodies,” her husband answered.
She rested her hand on top of his. “I like that, and it fits the eight of us. Penny was nanny-matched with Rowen in the spring. Then came Charlotte and Mitch in the late spring and early summer. Libby and Raz’s match took up the rest of the summer.”
“And we came along in the fall and threw one hell of a wrench into the nanny matchmaking process,” Landon finished.
“Madelyn saved the best for last,” she answered with a little smirk.
Landon squeezed her knee. “Speaking of last, we’re the last to arrive.”
She sighed. “After our video call disaster this morning, be prepared for the firing squad, heartthrob. My friends can be relentless.” She couldn’t help smiling as she spoke the words.
“Oh, I know. I was with their fiancé’s as they were being put through the wringer. You ladies are a force to be reckoned with.”
She gazed into his soulful brown eyes. “It’s been a wild ride for all of us, huh?”
He lifted her left hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “I’m just relieved we didn’t get stuck with the donkey match.”
“No kidding,” she answered with a chuckle, but her throat had grown thick with emotion.
Perhaps the excitement of the last several weeks was catching up with her.
